


And All I've Got is Your Hand

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Pacify [19]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Choking, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, F/M, Femdom, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Panic Attacks, Past Sexual Assault, Rough Sex, Scratching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:04:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4165062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth has never used her safeword. Never imagined she would have to. Never imagined, when she finally did, where the need for it might come from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All I've Got is Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> This is one I've been waiting to write for a while, but until now I frankly wasn't sure how to approach it, because I wanted to do so very, very carefully. So this one is kind of important to the overall trajectory of this universe. It's also quite heavy. It's not your conventional Pacify, to the extent that this series is ever very conventional.
> 
> To that end: there are flashbacks to sexual assault here. Not seriously explicit ones, but the psychological and emotional trauma resulting from them _is_ very explicit. Be warned. 
> 
> Again, I wanted to treat this carefully. I hope I've succeeded.
> 
> Title/auditory inspiration: ["Cold Water" by Damien Rice.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=_rPeRkVmCtg)

She has it. She's never used it.

Never had to. Maybe she should have expected to, but she never did that either. With him, it's always been trust. It's never been anything else. Sure, sometimes he startles her, pumps apprehension into her, even scares her, but it's never anything she can't handle. Never anything she doesn't _want._ Because she does, she wants all of this - wants to know how far he can push her, how far her body can go, everything she can do with it and everything he can _make_ it do. How much she can take. How far down she can sink, how far down he can carry her. She's not afraid. He's with her, she's in his hands, and she has never - since this all began - felt anything there but the purest and most complete safety.

He knows her. He's learned in the most hands-on way imaginable. Knows when to pull back, ease off, and when to keep pushing, where her edges are and how to take her to them, how to gently encourage her to put a toe across that line. A foot. Sometimes an entire step.

No matter how he pushes her - no matter how much pain he gives her, no matter how profoundly he erases the line between that pain and the most incredible pleasure she's ever known, no matter how dark the places in her head into which he carries her, it's never come to her that she might need to pull the kill-switch.

She has the word. He checks with her, makes sure she knows it. Can use it. And it's not that she would ever doubt that she can.

But after a while she almost forgot it was there.

It never occurred to her that what could make her use it might seem, in a universe where the dead can get up and walk, like the most mundane thing in the world.

~

They keep doing this now. Not every time, because there's nothing they do _every time_ , but a lot. She likes it. He does too. For now that's enough; there are some things she allows herself to analyze and then there are others that - while they don't exactly _worry_ her - she would prefer to just leave alone and enjoy. So why she would like calling him this so much, wearing this particular mask, doing things that she really does think the majority of the people she knows would find even more horrifying and confusing than the rest of what they often do...

She wants to leave it be.

Leave it be and love it. Love when he comes home like this and she can tell he wants it, almost _smell_ it on him, musky and thick. Arousal but somehow different from other times. Darker. Because this is. Sweet and safe but darker, twisted, so exciting because part of it does and probably always will feel a little bit _wrong._

Looking up from where she's sitting on the couch, laying her book down and getting up as he comes toward her, except it feels like she's falling with her gaze locked on his face, shadowy in the warm, low lamplight.

When they do this - really when they do anything - it's like she shrinks and he grows, looming and powerful and ready to take her, and all she can do is fold under him and be taken however he wants. She's slipping into it already and by the time he reaches her she's mostly there - this soft, deep place in her where everything is easy and thinking is completely unnecessary. She reaches for him at the same moment he reaches for her, braces herself on his arms as he settles his hands - God, so big and so _strong_ \- against the sides of her throat.

He leans down and in and she can _definitely_ smell him. It's in his sweat, flowing through his skin. She's sure she could taste it. She wants to, she wants to taste _him,_ and her lips part and a shaky breath slips out of her as he presses his lips against her brow.

"Baby girl," he whispers, and that's the signal. She goes loose in his hands, feels like he could nudge her and she would drop, and she sighs again. She's all tremors, ever nerve prickling and heat pouring between her legs. So wet already, and he's going to be _delighted_ when he touches her cunt and feels it.

"Daddy." Eyes half-lidded, heavy. She moans when he tilts her head back further and kisses her.

The first time he kissed her like this, when she drew him into this game, he was rough, insistent - fucking into her mouth with his tongue as she fucked herself, and he ate the noises she was making as her cunt squelched wet and hungry for him. Rough because _everything_ was rough, because he was angry with her and she was bad, but since then...

He likes being softer with her, at least at first. Easing her deeper. His fingers make their way into her hair, tugging strands loose from her ponytail, and he nudges her lips apart. Careful. Just the barest edge of teeth, like he's hinting at how this could go, but right now she's his good girl and she sighs happily as he pulls her closer with one hand on her hip. And she _can_ taste it, subtle but there, nothing she could describe but something she instantly knows.

Like how he seems bigger. Like how, when she feels the hard length of him pressing against her, every one of her prickling nerve endings twists into a thorn and she gasps and digs her fingers into his arms.

He smiles into her mouth, sudden and sharp even if the rest of him is still gentle. "Feel that, honey?" He cants his hips forward slightly, rocks against her; he's hot, he always gets so _hot_ like this, a goddamn furnace, burning her up. "Feel what you did, girl."

She whimpers, helpless and needier by the second - it's how he feels, how he's pinning her against nothing at all without even trying, how right now she'd do _anything_ for him, anything at all, but it's also his _voice._ Listening to him when he's using her always undoes her, the way his tone drops and takes on a texture like nothing else - she thinks of worn leather and unsanded wood and the growl of a distant motorcycle. But when he's like this - when he's her _Daddy_ \- it softens and smoothes out, unless he's angry with her. It's like a hand on her, stroking over her mind, and now she wonders whether she would just drop to the floor if he let her go.

"You been a good girl?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Ain't touched yourself today? You kept your fingers outta your pussy?" He's purring against her, his tongue flicking like a wet flame against her jaw - if he's using that, oh God... He has his signals, they both do, and they range from blatant to subtle, and this is one of the more subtle ones. His tongue here, now, and he'll offer it to her again later.

"Daddy..."

Does she want to be bad? This is an important question. He's left it up to her by staying in neutral, given it to her to swing things in one direction or another according to what she feels like she needs. Power. Hers. Does she want to be bad now? Make him cruel? Because he will be. He'll throw her down, hold her, hurt her before he finally gives her any kind of release.

She could say she was bad after all, that she had her fingers in her pussy _all goddamn day_ , licked up her own juices like a dirty little girl, that she's a slut, all she wants is cock. She can say these things and she can still make them sound so innocent, she can make herself seem mildly shocked by her own behavior while also just the tiniest bit wicked, her eyes sparkling with mischief, tongue slicking over her lips. So wet. Such a bad girl, she deserves to be punished.

Or she can be so good. And he'll be so sweet to her.

Unless he decides he doesn't want to be, regardless.

His hands tighten, both of them, fingers digging into her, tugging her head back - not yet painful but warning. "Answer me, sweetheart."

She swallows. Chooses. Holds onto him, because she wants so desperately to do other things with her hands, her fingers, and if she doesn't get herself under control she's going to be a bad girl no matter how hard she tries to behave.

"I was good, Daddy," she says again, breathy, just short of another moan. "I didn't... I didn't touch my pussy."

Not entirely true. But that's not the point.

"Oh, girl, you're so good for me." He's backing her up with his body, herding her - slow, careful, and she feels her ass hit the back of the armchair. She gasps - not surprise but what she imagines he might do with her here, images hurtling chaotic through her head - and he holds her head where it is, neck arched, just enough pull to sting her. It's almost comfortable.

Mostly in relation to the other things he could do to her, but still.

"Hold still." She shudders when he reaches under her skirt - so convenient that she wore one today, loose and deep forest green and just above her knees - parts her legs with light slaps on her thighs and cups her. And she's trying not to move, trying to be good, but his hand is like stone left for hours in the sun, so heavy and hard and blasting heat, his fingers against her lips and then sliding up over her panties to press down on her clit.

She's all smooth under there, silky, and her panties are white cotton and they're soaked. She could feel it before, feel it on her inner thighs, but she feels it even more clearly in the way the fabric clings to her shaved skin, his fingers through it, and in the breath he draws in and the fragmentary glimpses she gets of his eyes.

Dark. Hungry. Like she thought, the corner of his mouth lifting in a small, pleased smile.

"So wet for me, baby." He presses harder, circles, and a strained whimper slips out of her. "God, you know what I wanna do? I wanna taste you, baby girl." His fingers move away, maddening, but she whimpers again - even tighter, almost pained - as they creep beneath the elastic and glide over her. Spreading her lips, nestling between them, grazing her humming clit. "I wanna get down there and lick your sweet little pussy. You like that?"

She can't even answer. Not now, not when he's _doing that_ with his fingers, not quite fucking her and not quite rubbing her but somewhere horribly in between, making her feel how wet she is and making her even wetter and making it _so hard_ to be good. And he must sense that and if he does he clearly wants to take advantage of it, because his hand slips loose from her hair and down to cup her jaw, his thumb pushing into her mouth.

"Suck, baby. You want my cock later, you show me how much right now."

She does. She does and it's just short of frantic; his fingers working between her legs and thumb in her mouth, and it feels big, heavy, thick, to her it tastes salty, and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to turn it into something else. She takes it deep, deep enough for her lips to circle around where it joins his hand, and he groans softly and pulls it back, pushes in again, fucks her slowly just as his finger finally enters her cunt.

He's done this before - made her suck something as he's fucking her with something else. Her lips wrapped around his fingers, a candle, the neck of a bottle, once the handle of one of his knives. He does this and she thinks about how it would be if he could somehow be in two places at once, use both her mouth and her cunt at the same time, and then _three_ places at once, her mouth and cunt and ass, every one of her holes filled up with cock like the slutty little girl she is, and she's panting through her nose, legs shaking as he pumps his finger into her, and _fuck,_ she's seconds from coming and she sobs and shakes her head in desperate jerks.

_Daddy, I don't want to be bad._

But he leans in, lips and tongue and breath hot against her ear, whispers _C'mon, little girl, you can come for me, show me how good Daddy's makin' you feel,_ and that's all she needs. She squeals around his thumb, arches and collapses into wave after wave of shuddering, imagining her juices dripping over his knuckles and running down to his wrist.

No idea if they are. No idea of anything. She sags back against the chair and he withdraws his thumb and curls his arm around her waist, his finger still in her cunt, holding her close.

"Girl, that was so fuckin' pretty, Jesus Christ." Still that smooth, easy purr, but it's a bit tighter, a bit rougher, and he sounds slightly breathless himself. And through the haze in which she's drifting, she's freshly aware of his cock against her, such a wonderful promise, because maybe he can't use it to fill all three of her holes at once, but he can fill one and make it so good for her. "So pretty when you come, sweetheart. I'm so glad you were good. So glad I could make you."

She hums softly, tightens up as he pulls his finger out of her, and her lips part instantly and instinctively as he nudges them apart and she tastes herself. She loves how she tastes and loves when he gives it to her, has since the beginning, and she sighs as she cleans him with exquisite, delicious care.

"Fuckin' _love_ your mouth," he murmurs, leaning so close, watching her. "God, you'll suck anythin', won't you? Here." He's reaching into his pocket, she can tell with the smallest fraction of attention that isn't locked onto his finger, and she hears the faint crackle of plastic as he unwraps something. "Got a treat for you, baby girl. Open up."

Green. Hard, shiny green.

Just a blur, nothing she can really focus on, and at first - as his finger leaves her - she's just puzzled. Then that sharp, acidic, sweet-sour smell slams into her nostrils, churns up into her sinuses, thrusting and vicious. The smell and the taste as he presses it past her lips, and he's not rough, he's so gentle with her, and somehow that makes it worse. It's all _wrong,_ the room is spinning and she shouldn't feel like this with him, because he's her _Daddy,_ he's _Daryl,_ he loves her more than his own life and he would never hurt her, never ever, she's so safe with him, she's safer than she's ever been with anyone else or ever will be.

But she's not safe, nothing is safe, _he's_ not safe because she wants to fight him, hurt him however she can, hit him and scratch him and make him bleed, and her head is shattering glass and a single thing breaks through it in a pale beam, opens a door through which she can escape, and the word shoots out of her head like a bullet as she wrenches against him: _Moonshinemoonshinemoonshine._

It is. It's shining. It's shining and cold and clean and everything stops.

Later she'll wonder if he really did freeze. If he had an instant of shocked, confused panic at all akin to what she felt before everything fell apart. She won't know how to ask him - won't be afraid but simply won't know how to phrase the question - but it does seem like there's that lock-down in him before he moves again. Lollipop gone, hands gone, and then he's lowering her down as a wave of trembling that has nothing whatsoever to do with pleasure forces through her.

Floor. Floor solid under her. The rough of the woven area rug. His arms around her, not pulling her closer or pushing her away but just loosely encircling her, so strong, and he won't hurt her. He won't. He won't touch her like that, won't make her-

For an awful three seconds she's positive she's going to throw up.

She doesn't. She breathes. She breathes because he's telling her to - not just telling her but showing her how, _in and hold and out_ , deep, lungs filling, and there's a rhythm and she falls into it, and the world stops spinning. Gradually starts to come back into focus.

She curls into his lap, eyes tight shut, arms and legs tucked in close. Fetal. He's silent but he's stroking her hair, over and over, and he's Daryl and he loves her and she's alive and it's all right.

But he's shaking too. She can feel it.

~

At some point he asks her if she's okay.

He asks her quietly, bent close; she's not sure how long it's been since she said the word but she's starting to feel a little stiff down here on the floor, and chilly now, the heat all bled out of her and her skirt rucked up around the tops of her thighs.

She's back, she is, but something happened. Something bad.

She's going to have to tell him.

She turns and looks up, nods, tries to push herself up to sit. His hand settles on her back, and again she can feel the tremors in him. They haven't left him. She looks up again, studying his face with her increasingly sharp focus; his voice was steady and his face is mostly neutral but she can see it in his eyes.

He's terrified.

God. God, she never would have kept herself from saying it for fear of this, never would have let that stop her and he would never want it to... But it hurts. It hurts to see it. She worked so hard to help him not be afraid of this.

And he wasn't even hurting her. He was being so gentle. So sweet.

"I'm cold," she whispers, and the way the words come out - a bit slurred - she realizes that she's not fully back yet. Her mind, sure, but the disconnect between her head and her hands is still there. It's difficult to curl her fingers into anything tight enough to grip.

"Can I-?"

She understands what he's asking, his hand on her shoulder like that, and she nods again. He shifts, slips backward and crouches, slides his arm under her back and his other under her knees and lifts her. Lifts her like she's nothing. She doesn't go limp but she curls an arm around his neck and tips her head against his shoulder, closes her eyes.

She remembers this. She shouldn't be able to, most of the time she can't except in some of her worst, sickest nightmares, but right now sick nightmares feel awfully close, and when he lifts her like this and holds her against him, she can almost hear Maggie screaming.

But she's safe.

She was safe even then, with him. He thought she was dead but in that moment he would have done his best to murder anyone who tried to take her away from him.

He sinks down on the couch, settles her in his lap, fumbles for the blanket they keep tossed over the back and covers her with it, tucks it around her. And she's warm and _he's_ warm, big and solid against her and holding her tightly - holding her like he probably wanted to before and didn't let himself.

Didn't know if it was all right.

_God, Daryl, it's all right. It's all right._

She waits for him to ask her what it was. But he doesn't.

~

"You didn't do anythin'."

Again, time has gotten fuzzy, and she's not sure how much has passed. It was dusk outside a while ago - not much between that and real dark - and with the lamp on and everything quiet there's really no way to know. Once or twice she thought she heard voices out on the street, a barking dog, but nothing else, and those aren't an indicator of anything either way.

She's in here with him, and this - like always - is a space they've carved off from the rest of the world. The only things that matter here are the things they decide matter. The only rules that apply are the ones they make together.

This place was always safe, before, and she knows it still is, but she feels... Something's shattered it. Something deep inside her woke up and smashed its way out and broke things before she could put it away again.

She forgot about the lollipop, is the thing. She forgot about the taste and the sour apple smell - all of it green, somehow the smell and the taste just as acid green as that slick-shining hard candy. She forgot until now.

How could she forget something like that?

_You got shot in the head. For a while there were a lot of things you couldn't remember._

But she got them all back. She thought. She was sure she did. She worked hard, people helped her, and she got them back. Everything important, anyway.

_Maybe you didn't want this part back._

She remembered the rest of it. She remembered what happened after, when he cornered her. Daryl _knows_ about it. She told him. There are details he doesn't know - breaking glass and groans and hard breathing, the smell of him and the disgusting, over-powerful cologne he seemed to like for some fucking reason, the flash of his teeth and his piggy little eyes, things that seethe through her dreams even now - but Daryl knows the basics. He knows the important parts. He had to know, if he was going to be choking her and hitting her, biting her, pinning her against walls and putting knives to her throat, holding her down and fucking her so hard she cries. He had to know that was in there.

He didn't know about this. He didn't know because _she_ didn't know, and what the fuck _else_ might be down there that she doesn't know about?

She almost forgot what it felt like to be frightened of herself.

But she says that and he jerks his head up, blinking down at her. Not asleep, not even dozing - he was lost in himself, and she only has to see his face for the first third of the second to know what he was doing.

People look at Daryl Dixon and she knows what they see. He called himself _just some redneck asshole_ and _especially_ up here, that has to be what at least a few people - who really know him only by sight - think. They might look at him and see a rough man, nothing smooth or even particularly civilized about him, and she's sure he wouldn't even disagree. They might look at him and not see the kindness in him, the goodness, the way he can be so gentle, and she understands that. They might look at him and her together and be completely _bewildered,_ and not because he's so much older or she's so much younger. She understands that as well.

But they also - some of them, she's certain - look at him and think _dumb_ and those people have no. Fucking. Idea. Because Daryl's mind runs fast and hot and it never stops, never even really slows down, the world pouring into it and being made sense of, _complicated_ sense, and there are things he sees instantly and comprehends just as rapid that no one else she knows ever could.

He never finished high school but he might be one of the smartest people she's ever known.

Then there are other times where his mind turns on him and becomes a half-mad dog chasing its own tail - not a game but a genuine attempt to catch and hurt itself - snarling and snapping and spinning in endless, pointless circles. And he's doing that now. Looking down at her and thinking about what he must have seen on her face, in her eyes, and going back over every tiny thing that was happening at that moment, all of which he remembers more clearly than if he was reviewing multi-camera footage of it. Where his hands were, what they were doing, the placement of each individual finger, how close he was, what he was saying, the smallest changes in the rhythm and choice of his words. Everything. Combing through every detail he can recall, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

He's looking for the fault. He's looking for whatever it was he did.

If this had been something else - too much pain, or too tight a grip on her throat, or if he just got too rough in general and startled or scared her beyond what she wanted - she knows it would have been relatively easy for him to deal with.

But that's not what he saw.

She pushes herself up a little and lays her hand over his cheek, thumb against his jaw, and holds his shadowy gaze.

This is very important. And she has to do it carefully.

"You didn't do anythin'," she repeats. Slow. "It wasn't you. It was Gorman."

~

She asks him to take her to bed, and he does.

He doesn't have to carry her. She's more than capable of walking on her own, now. But he does carry her, and she doesn't have to ask him; she wants him to and she senses some part of him _needs_ to, and as he takes her up the stairs cradled in his arms she closes her eyes and she remembers this too. The flights of stairs. They seemed endless. Going down and down; she had been mostly out of the world by then, fragments coming to her in a senseless jumble of sensory input as her brain struggled for blood and air, but she had been half certain that he was some kind of angel and he was carrying her to...

Where?

Because he was carrying her _down._

But now he carries her up, and she's feeling safer and safer every moment - and that's good, she thinks as he lays her down, because she's going to need to feel safe to tell him about this.

She asks him to undress her. She could do this too but the slow ritual of it and his hands on her skin will soothe him even more than her. When she's naked and pulling the covers up around herself she asks him to undress too, to come to her, and he does, sliding into bed behind her and pulling her against his chest.

The worst part of this for him isn't going to be that he triggered it. The worst part is going to be that neither of them saw it coming.

The worst part is going to be that there was never any way for him to avoid it at all.

~

_It was Gorman._

She reached over and turned off the bedside lamp, turned to face him. Now it's just them in the dark. She needs it to be dark. Someone else might find the lack of light deeply alarming, an invitation to returning nightmares, but with Daryl in the dark - broken by the few lights outside - she feels as safe as she thinks she's going to. She came to identify Daryl with darkness long before they even started doing this - he was dark himself when she found him again, darker than she remembered him, hair like crow feathers, his clothes, even his pale blue eyes somehow dark now and then. And it wasn't threatening. He enfolded her. The first few times they slept together - just slept, him wrapped around her and her tucked against his chest - he was all dark, and he kept the dreams back. They had plagued her since she woke up at Grady, the worst nightmares she ever knew, but she slept in his arms, in his darkness, and they went away for a while.

Then she taught him how to spin a new kind of darkness for her, a new kind of blanket to wrap her in. Power and pain. The kind of pleasure that breaks you. He gave her that and made her feel a safety and a sweetness she didn't know was possible. Pretty certain he didn't either.

She's in his darkness now. If Gorman tried to reach her here, it would burn him to ashes. Burn him down to nothing.

"It was Gorman," she whispers, and she tells him what she remembers. He's trembling again the second she mentions that name, and as she talks - quietly, haltingly, occasionally having to stop - his tremors only intensify. By the time she gets to the end - and really, in terms of the specific events relating to the lollipop, there isn't a whole lot to tell - she's the one holding him, containing his rage. The truth is that he's peaceful these days, very, and somehow he's the most peaceful when he's giving her pain, but she knows this is still in him. It never went anywhere. The rage that made him kill Dawn, how he didn't hesitate and he wasn't sorry and he would have killed her again if he could, killed her a hundred times and not been satisfied.

"I'm sorry."

His voice is shaking, she can tell he's crying without having to touch his face, and she feels so angry she's sick with it. How dare he. How _dare_ he. He's dead, the disgusting rapist prick, and he _still_ got into this, _violated_ it, invaded something wonderful and beautiful and made them both afraid.

"Daryl, it _wasn't you,_ don't-"

"I wasn't there."

Oh.

He didn't say this when she told him that first time, what happened with Gorman. What she _did_ remember, which she thought was everything. She could sense how angry he was, could see it then too, and he was shaking, but he didn't say this. She worried he would feel that way, but as far as she could see at the time...

"I shoulda been there, I shoulda- If I tried- You shouldn't have been there anyway, I couldn't-"

She stops him with her mouth.

It's hard. There's force behind it. The anger she's feeling now. Not at him, not like this, _never_ at him, and she trusts him to feel it and know it, but that doesn't stop her from raking a hand into his hair and tightening her fingers, twisting hard enough that she knows it has to hurt as she pushes his lips apart with her tongue and shoves her way into him. He gasps and then he whimpers, and she feels the tears on his cheeks transferred to hers as she presses in closer. She's under him but it's like she's not, pulling him against her by the hair, by her other hand on his arm, her nails digging into his corded muscle.

Gorman doesn't get to fuck with this. _No one_ does.

"Beth." He pulls back enough to say her name, to _moan_ it, and he sounds weak, voice cracking on the singular syllable. And it's like he's dragging _her_ in, even though his arms are still loose around her and have - weirdly - only gotten looser since she started kissing him like this, and she goes - _surges_ up against him, hooks a leg over the back of his thigh and rolls her whole body in a single long wave.

Suddenly this is something else.

Heat is pouring through her, flooding down to her cunt, flooding _into_ it, and she knows he can feel how wet she suddenly is when he gasps and stiffens against her. She gets it; this is unexpected, maybe she shouldn't want this right now, but all at once she _does_ , wants it with everything. Wants it with her cunt, her mouth, her pounding heart, _hers_ and no one else's, and she can do whatever the fuck she wants with them.

Not even Daryl's. Not really. Just hers.

She can do whatever she wants, and she wants to _fight,_ wants to take this _back,_ and fuck Gorman, fuck that wretched little _pig_ , that piece of shit, disgusting and worthless and good only for walker food, and she didn't even give him _half_ of what he deserved. She could ruin him, _destroy_ him - she doesn't need Daryl to do it. Wouldn't have needed him there. _Didn't_ need him there. It was _her_.

Gorman couldn't rape her, a bullet couldn't kill her, hundreds of miles couldn't keep her away from the man in her arms. This is hers. _Hers._

_He's hers._

"On your back," she hisses, shoves at him, and he falls back before her.

She can feel his shock as she swings herself on top of him - she can practically smell it on him, like fear. Like adrenaline. This is _not_ how things go, not how she finds her comfort. But this is how it's happening now, and she straddles his hips and braces herself on his chest, stares down at him with her breath heaving in and out of her. He's staring back, his eyes huge and dark as the rest of him, lips parted and wet, and she wants to _take_ them, take his mouth, and she does, lunging down and closing her teeth over his bottom lip and tugging until he gasps again and gropes for her thighs.

Not fighting her. Not at all. Just trying to hold on.

He's hard. He might be shocked, sure, but he's not too shocked to want her just as bad as he always does, nudging the crack of her ass, precome smearing over her skin as he moves under her. She pushes up, reaches back and grasps him, squeezes, and his breath stutters to a halt and the groan that tears out of him is like nothing she's ever heard before.

Heats her even more. Scorches her blood. She bares her teeth and strokes him, once, hooking the nails of her other hand into his side.

"You're gonna fuck me," she breathes, stroking him again - slow, but rough, she imagines maybe almost painful. "You understand? You're gonna fuck me, and it's gonna be _hard_ , and you're not gonna come until I say."

His jaw drops. Not even shock anymore; she doesn't know if there's a word for what she's seeing unfold across his face, flaring in his eyes like lightning inside a thunderhead. _Need,_ probably more than anything, _hunger,_ he's _starving_ for her, and as soon as he nods she lifts herself with a sharp thrust of her thighs, moves his cock where she wants it, and falls down onto him. In her all at once, _big_ \- she's not sure he's _ever_ been this hard - and deep, and she grips his thigh and throws her head back and makes a noise that isn't a groan or a snarl or a cry but somehow all three of them at once.

She barely notices his own ragged cry. She's already moving.

She's ridden him before. Sure she has; plenty of times. Regardless of the circumstances, he loves just lying back and watching her take what she wants from him, watching her seize these moments of control even if the rest of it belongs to him. But she's _never_ ridden him like this, moving like a wild thing, her hips snapping and savage and he can barely hang onto her. She _is_ growling, working his cock deeper into her, _more,_ not enough, arching her back and bracing herself on his thighs. Still not what she wants; she scratches him, rakes her nails over his skin and makes him twitch and yelp, leans forward again and holds him down with her hands on his chest and grinds herself hot and slick against him.

And he's just staring. Can't take his eyes off her.

Awed.

That's what gets her smiling. It also doesn't slow her down. It urges her on, gets her fingers hooked again; he might be bleeding when this is all done, and she has absolutely _no_ problem with that. Maybe he _should_ bleed; he's made her bleed countless times now. Marked her up. This is only fair. She's his, yes, of _course_ she is, but he's hers, he's _all_ fucking hers, and he's going to wake up tomorrow and feel it and _know._

She can hurt him. She _is_ hurting him. She looks down and she can see it, the way his face is twisting; she knows pain and pleasure well enough by now to identify them when they're both there.

"Beth," he gasps, trying to move with her but he just can't keep up, doesn't have a _prayer_. "Oh my God, Beth, I can't... Ah... Beth, please, Jesus, _please,_ I- I don't-"

" _Shut up_."

There's no moment of transition. It isn't and then it is. Her hands on his chest, hooked into claws, and then both wrapped around his throat.

Everything stops.

She remembers this. She remembers how she wasn't afraid. She remembers how she wanted more, how she didn't understand and she didn't care, how he choked out her breath and she felt so _good_ when he did it, so _safe._ So _strong._ She remembers that he _was_ afraid and she helped him not be.

She remembers how she did that.

He's breathing. But not easily. Straining for it, rasping under her palms. She isn't breathing at _all;_ she's gaping down at her hands, his face, what she's doing to him, what he's _letting_ her do, and there's a horrible, lurching moment where she's sure everything is wrong and _she's_ wrong, because this is not how this goes, not where she is or what she does, and before there was Gorman and somehow everything just got worse, and she can feel panic rising in her like a tide of ice.

And he lays his hands over hers. Tightens them. Tightens them until she feels his breath rattle to a halt under her palms.

Nods.

That's all she needs.

She crashes back into it. She's a whip-crack of lightning seeking the ground, inhuman, untameable, fucking him with her cunt and hips and hands, her entire body, squeezing his throat as she grinds her clit down like half of a clenched jaw. So close, pressure building in her head, and her scars are throbbing as blood thunders through her - _alive,_ she's so fucking alive, she's the most intensely _living_ thing in the whole fucking world, taking everything from him, collapsing and compressing and _exploding_ out, wrenching her entire body forward and back and _strangling_ him, snarling _don't you come you son of a bitch don't you fucking come don't you DARE_

It drops her.

She's gasping. Sobbing. Trying to hold herself up, fumbling her hands away from his throat, shivering everywhere. Everything is bleeding out of her at once, no gentle float downward but a hard crash, and she's lost. Spinning into the dark.

His dark.

He's pushing himself up, pulling her against his chest - still inside her, but that seems so unimportant and he doesn't appear to care. She goes limp against him, the shivers intensifying into full-body shudders, and he combs a hand into her hair and kisses her temple, her brow, her cheekbone and her mouth. Whispering.

_Girl, it's okay. It's alright. Sweetheart, everything's alright. We're alright. We're right here. Beth, we're here._

_You got me._

Not _I got you._ He's said that before.

Not that at all.

~

He has marks. A lot of them.

She wakes up first, lies there in the colorless pre-dawn light and looks at them, at him. At the scratches on his upper arm, the edge of the one she can see on his chest - thin and crusted with blood. At the bruises just visible on the side of his neck, dark purple and darkening further.

She stares at these for a while. Reaches out and touches them finally, trails a fingertip down from his jawline to his collarbone.

This is new.

She doesn't hate it.

Something horrible happened to her. She doesn't belong to it. She knew that already. She belongs to _him,_ and he's spent months proving that to her again and again, showing her over and over how strong she is, how _alive._

But that's not all that's going on here. And maybe she should have expected it. It's wonderful to belong to someone. It's wonderful to break beneath his hands and his teeth and his body, let him fold her into his darkness and keep her there.

It's wonderful to do that and be that and go with him.

But she forgot something. There were parts of her she didn't know she was missing. So maybe there have also been parts of her she hasn't been tending to. Parts of her that might want to come out and play.

New ways to be strong. Be alive.

She looks at him, strokes her fingers back up and down his cheek, along his jaw, stopping at his mouth. He stirs, goes still again. She's never seen him look this relaxed.

She's also never seen herself when he's done with her.

But she thinks she recognizes it anyway.

She curls her hand against the side of his neck, over the marks she left, and sleeps again.


End file.
